Tuesday, December 06, 2011

General Mills: Justice League #4

"Breakout!" by Joshua Williamson and Bruno Redondo.

A few weeks ago, the Shrine talked about a series of four JLA-centric comics produced and packaged exclusively for General Mills, and available only with specially-marked boxes of cereal. Now we finally get a chance to take a look at the most Aquaman-centric issue, which opens in Atlantis:

With some well-thrown Batarangs, Batman subdues the waterlogged crooks, who claim he has no jurisdiction here. Bats responds by saying he is doing a favor for their king, also known as...

Cut to: the frozen North, and The Penguin is entering a frozen cave. He's talking to someone we can't see, about a treasure trove of artifacts that Aquaman found from the original city of Atlantis. One item in particular is of interest: "The Penguin Legacy Statue", which of course he "has to own."

The Penguin wants to arrange an underwater jailbreak, and in the chaos he will steal the statue. And who better to arrange an underwater jailbreak than...

A short while later, Aquaman and Batman return to Atlantis, and find Ocean Master waiting for them. While Aquaman deals with his brother personally, The Penguin's plan goes off as planned: the royal guards swim off to help, leaving the Penguin Legacy Statue unprotected.

Meanwhile, Aquaman and Ocean Master have it out yet again:

With that, the rest of the JLA show up, and help round up all the freed criminals, as well as rebuilding the prison. After all the cleaning up is done, everyone wonders, where did Batman go?

Of course, Batman is busy apprehending The Penguin, who was busy escaping with the statue. Batman drags him back to Atlantis, and he and Aquaman point that he technically broke Atlantean law, so...

...The End!

I really enjoyed this book, it has an all-ages appeal that's perfect for this kind of project. Its great that Aquaman gets to take center stage, something that certainly never happened in the old days of cereal premiums. Writer Joshua Williamson mixes a bit of classic comic book Aquaman with the more light-hearted Brave and the Bold version; again perfect for a book like this.

This comic also comes with a JLA pin-up (by Joe Prado, no less), and this credits page featuring a piece by the master of merchandising art, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez:

Special Thanks to Shrine Correspondent Russell Burbage and Jared Baker for providing us a non-cereal-encrusted copy of this comic!